Bring back skill loss on bonded pets

It's good to see this moving towards something we can all agree on. my #nerftamers was a tongue in cheek observation that tamers live pretty swell lives with or without pet skill loss.
This is speculation, but it wouldn't surprise me if removing pet stat loss as well as some of the other DDoS bandaids (corpse duration, restoring lost pets, other services) was a clever effort on the part of the staff to make the impact of the DDoSs insignificant by every conceivable metric. The DDoSs are designed to frustrate us and I think Tela is wise to rip out all the teeth he can, even the baby teeth that are only biting the strongest templates.

edit: I think he should also remove skill loss for short terms while DDoSs are a going concern. PKing is as valid a play style as any other.

I fairness, dragon stat loss is not the only DDoS protection that was granted. Longer corpse decays and teleportation from dungeons into towns benefits more or less everyone.

I guess those players benefit from their bonded regular horse not suffering stat loss.

So everyone gets longer corpse decays, everyone gets town teleported, but only tamers get their primary weapons exempted from any noticeable loss.

It all comes back to the fact that the most powerful PvM template in the game already has protection for it's most powerful weapons regardless of whether they die or not. This isn't the case with every other template.

Mages don't keep regs, bards don't keep instruments, and dexxers don't keep their weapons. Currently, if everything was "equal" weapons and instruments would be bonded, but take a % durability hit (don't know what to do about mages here). No matter how you shake a stick at it, tamers have it WAY above and beyond every other template, this is without even mentioning the changes since DDoS.

The benefit of retaining stat loss for PKs is that for a significant portion of the active PK population, stat loss serves simply to regulate how much player killing goes on, rather than as penalty that actually gets incurred by PKs. For example, and with the notable exception of players like Pork Fried Rice, active PKs like Inti Jiwana, Roxxer McOwnage, Bart Simpson, Genocide, Bolt Vanderhuge, Science Warlord, and a number of the lililis keep their short-term count at or near zero. Death as a result of DDoS for these players is no different than for anyone else. But removing stat loss would, I suspect, drastically increase the amount of player killing that goes on. In my opinion, this would be detrimental to the shard in a way that tamers taking on more risk is not.

That being said, if I were Pork Fried Rice and died with 400+ short-term counts solely as a result of a DDoS, I'd be pretty pissed.

I can only speak for these two chars since they are two of my three pks. The only reason they are typically under 5 shorts is because I simply don't give a fuck to do stuff most people are too afraid to do on their stat reds.

For instance I'll iust about guarantee you'll never catch PFR or really anyone that currently has more than 5 short terms for that matter running into tiny rooms at elder gazers or balrons or where ever by themselves to attempt to kill some triple boxing tamer, running through guard zones, going through blue gates that are 99% to town but hoping that maybe just maybe that tamer didn't gate to town so you can finish the kill etc. I'm extremely brazen on my pks and I pay for it a lot by dying a lot on them but.

So I usually don't end up accumulating more than 20 short terms before I do something crazy and get myself killed.

I'm surprised that this is even being debated.

A temporary patch was made eliminating pet stat loss due to DDoS attacks to spare the player unnecessary grief.
This pertains to tamers only.
No alterations were made for other skills nor items.

The evidence is empirical that his is unfair.

Yes, I said this earlier but damn...

Be DAMNED CAREFUL what you wish for, you'll get it and 20 other things you didn't.

So to summarize, bond my campfire kindling. My camper died once due to a DDoS attack. My suffrage is equal to anyone else be they tamer, slayer wielding dexxer, pk, or camper.

... and while you're at it, bond cookie trays.


Sure, bonding and no pet stat loss is .... but, I can't stand the thought of IT and all the other suggestions being put in place on top of that.

I just found this server, please let's not fubar it any futher.

I do this damn near everyday that I'm active. Plenty of real tamers can attest to it.

Not a single tamer, someone triple boxing tamers in a tiny room. I'm not sure it has ever worked for me, but I'll continue to try. I seriously doubt you do this everyday, otherwise you would be dead literally all the time.

I do both... (single AND triple box tamers) ... my tamer is on the way to being #1 for both Elder Gazer (holy shit Dalavar killed a lot of Gazers) AND Blood Ele kills.

With that said: I think I've only ever seen Pork Fried Rice once... you got me about a week ago at bloods while I was typing a message in IRC. I always wondered if you actually still played or what; quite mysterious. I see Punt much more often.

*shrug*

and much respect for as far as I can tell abandoning the Koncept alias... >.< ... I really did use that on like every free shard ever for a long time. Teehee

tl;dr: punt dies a lot

the fact that champ spawns were done less often before the tamer-targetted DDOS protection was instated is just part of the ebb and flow of guild logistics and guild politics. correlation v causation, fine sir.

It seems to me you're for whatever keeps it easy for you to farm with dragons because not only are not in to taking risks but you also don't enjoy a challenge. Why not just go mow? I now have a tamer and while it can net some serious cash it flat out boring to me to play. I still think tamers creatures should be penalized like the before mention 2.5% per slot. If it takes four slots then guess what.. 2.5% x 4 slots = 10% stat loss for your BONDED dragon to come back from. You don't have to go out and find another perfect stat dragon and start all over. As for the PK thing LOL. remember the original post was about the lack of stat loss due to the DDOS attacks. Chris turned it off for tamers. Cool we get it. As far as I'm aware of the only other thing in the game that would lose stats if it dies is a ….. Wait for it….. PK. So that was the point of the unfairness to the PK, at least thats how I took it. I don't want this to turn in to OSI where dexxers can just solo and diseased blood because of UBER weapons and armor and bunch of expensive bullshit. I wouldn't mind archers getting some love but whatever I still play them and have fun. Everyone here knows archers are getting shafted more than any other class but Tamers… Seriously? Don't play the takes forever to build tamer shit either. It can be done entirely AFK in a week or so… #nerftamers

btw thats the first time I ever hash tagged anything in my life..

Don't worry, it hurts less the second time and by the third time it starts feeling good...feeling right.

I've said several times that I think 2.5% stat loss strikes the right balance. It provides some penalty for what is otherwise a tremendous benefit (bonded pets) afforded to the most powerful PvM class (tamers).

Remember that the point of this thread was to advocate not only for the return of stat loss, but also to increase the penalty. I think the latter is a bad idea, for the reasons that I've repeated ad nauseum in this tread (more risk is not necessarily better), all of which you appear to have ignored in favor of the "IT'S UNFAIR THAT TAMERS ARE SO POWERFUL!!" argument.

Yes, because the original 10% 'damage' risk is way too much for the impoverished tamers of the shard to handle. It's not nearly as easy to replace as a 500,000g slayer weapon. Right?


RIGHT?






RIGHT?!?!?!

This equation seems unbalanced.

No, it needs to be 10% or higher... UO is about risks. This is what's sets it apart from those other MMORPGs.

Just found a picture of Blaise's arguments: